


Missing from the Morgue

by crossingwinter



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Beta Pairing: Arya Stark/Gendry, Beta Pairing: Daenerys Targaryen/Jon Snow, Gen, dadvos, inspired by wight-hunt 2k17, izzy you deserve better but you get what you pay for I suppose, this is a little less cracky than planned but I’m still amused by it, this is also silly and pointless
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-16
Updated: 2017-08-16
Packaged: 2018-12-16 04:37:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11821380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter
Summary: It begins with a dead body.And is a Jon and Gendry Buddy Cop Fic.





	Missing from the Morgue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [StormDancer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/StormDancer/gifts).



> For Izzy, who doesn't care about Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire at all, but watched the most recent episode of GOT passively and said to me, "I demand a Jon-Gendry Buddy Cop Fic" and who am I to deny my wondrous beta such a demand?
> 
> Accordingly--sorry, since this is a gift work for my beta it is unbeta-ed. If Izzy has comments and changes to make I'll make them once she's read. Not how the usual upload process works, I know.

It begins with a dead body.

That’s how things like this tend to begin.  Murder cases are the bread and butter of any police force.  Nothing like a good old homicide to really put you through your paces. 

Gendry’s been ready for a homicide case ever since he got promoted.  Years of being a beat cop will do that to you.  When you sign up for the police academy, they rarely tell you how much time will be spent helping traffic run smoothly, or sitting in a car with a speed radar, ready to dole out a speeding ticket to someone who just wasn’t paying attention.

So obviously, Gendry’s first murder case would begin with a dead body. 

But the murder case was not the antecedent of that “it,” up there. 

No, _it_ is something entirely different.

“So, Thoros,” Snow says, leaning against the steel locked vault.  “Anything in the autopsy?”

Snow’s a legend.  He spent years under cover, doing a deep dive on some guy who was known—until Snow helped bring the Feds down on his ass—as “The Night King.”  He’s back on the force, regular old detective now, though everyone knows he’s a shoe-in for a promotion at the next round.  Gendry knows he’s got a lot to learn from Snow, and the sheer dumb luck of having been assigned to be his partner—him so new, Snow so seasoned…it’s got him more excited than he can really admit.

Myr looks up from his microscope.  He’s got dark circles under his eyes—he’s had dark circles ever since he started attending AA meetings—and looks between the two of them, clearly disgruntled at being interrupted.  Gendry doesn't much care.  He's never liked Myr very much.

“There was some strange marking on his skin, you’ll recall.  Our John Doe,” Gendry continues.  He wants to impress Snow.  It’s very important that Snow like him.  Snow doesn’t now that yet.  Snow’ll just assume it’s his junior partner being eager.  But he’s on strict orders that he and Snow be on first name terms by the end of the day.

“Oh yeah,” Thoros says and he scoots across the floor on his rolling office chair, unwilling to get to his feet.  It squeaks a lot.  He needs to oil the wheels on that thing.  It’s old and metal—not like the fancy plastic ones that Captain Seaworth has upstairs.  “This’ll interest you.”  He grabs the metal bar to one of the body vaults and pulls open the door and tugs on the metal tray.

They stare for a moment.  Not at the gruesome, mutilated corpse that had made Gendry sick to his stomach the first time he’d seen it, nor the blank staring eyes of the face they focused on when trying not to stare at the gruesome, mutilated corpse.

The empty tray. 

Because there’s no gruesome, mutilated corpse in the vault at all. 

Their vic has disappeared.

* * *

 

Gendry:  _This is bad.  This is so very bad._

Arya:  _How does a corpse just go missing?_

Gendry: _I don’t even know how to begin to know._

Arya: _And Myr didn’t just….put it in the wrong vault?_

Gendry: _We checked every single one, and then went and looked at the visitor’s log in the morgue.  We’re detectives.  We know how to find things._

Arya: _In theory._

Arya: _How’s Jon taking it?_

Gendry:  _He’s doing what I’m doing._

Arya: _Texting feverishly?_

Gendry: _I don’t know about feverishly, but he’s definitely typing on his phone now._

Arya: _I’m about to go into class.  Keep me updated.  I want to know about the case of the missing murder victim._

Gendry: _We can do better than that._

Arya: _I’ll think of a better one in class and let you know._

* * *

It should be noted, before we proceed, that Jon’s been through all sorts of hell.

Five years under cover does that to a man.  You lose your sense of self is what he told his therapist, who was very supportive of all the transitions he was taking “back to life” as she’d taken to calling it, nodding at him over the top of her note pad.  You get a little nihilistic when you’re stuck around people who don’t really give two shits about the value of life, and Jon’s always thought he’s valued life a lot.

Losing his vic’s corpse hits harder than it should—not just on an emotional level, another dead body he couldn’t save, another person he couldn’t help—but on a pride level as well. 

He’s Jon Fucking Snow.  He brought down the Night King.  He is not going to go into his meeting with Cersei Lannister tomorrow—who already thinks he and his entire team are complete blow-hards—and tell her that he somehow lost the corpse of the murder victim whose perp she will be prosecuting.  No fucking way.  He got a medal of honor for his work on his last case.  Seaworth had said that he deserved _two_ , one for him and one for the persona he’d adopted.  (It had been Sam who’d come up with the name “Aegon Targaryen.”  Some jackass in a cold case that Sam worked had named two of his sons Aegon Targaryen so the name just stuck out for him.  After that, adopting the aloof persona of some rich asshole had worked all-too-well for fitting in with the Night King and his crew.  Captain Seaworth had found the character ridiculous, and Jon didn’t know whether to take that personally or not.  Seaworth was always very paternal to everyone on the squad, which made his commentary on the character Jon had chosen for somehow harsh.) 

He glances at Smith.  Smith is texting too.  He’s got a concerned look on his face, and looks up after he hits send.  “What do we do now?” he asks.  It’s in that moment that Jon really feels how much more junior Smith is than him.  He’s new to this—that much is written on his face.  They’re about the same age, but he’s probably never had a case go belly up in quite this spectacular a fashion. 

No.  No, it’s not belly up just yet.  Jon refuses to allow that. 

“Well, we’re going to find it.”

“How?” Smith asks, but not in a whiny sort of way.  In a _let’s go_ sort of way.  Jon likes that.  “What’s the next move?”

Jon glances back through the door to the morgue.  Thoros is tap-tap-tapping away on a computer, looking panicked.  He’s probably never lost a corpse before, either.  And it’ll be his ass on the line if they don’t find it.  Thoros is not a bad guy—he doesn’t deserve to have his ass fired over this.  Not least because stealing a dead body—that’s got to be some sort of abduction charge, right?  Definitely against the law, isn’t it? 

“Let’s find the security tapes,” Jon says.  “Whoever stole that corpse _has_ to be somewhere on footage.”

“Are we going to tell Seaworth?” Smith asks.  Again—not in a _shouldn’t we be following the rules_ sort of. 

“My old captain had the philosophy of it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission,” Jon says with more bravado than he feels.  That had, on more than one occasion, gotten him into some truly deep shit with Captain Mormont.  And while generally, this philosophy is one that can lead to some truly spectacular work—innovations, daring creativity and the like—in this particular instance, it should be noted, that it is a very bad idea.

* * *

Jon: _Have you ever heard of a dead body going missing during an autopsy?_

Dany: _Is this a joke that I’m supposed to be getting?_

Jon: _I wish it were._

* * *

 

“What’s the plan for _him?_ ”  They’re outside the security office, and Gendry’s fairly certain that Snow’s too fresh back in the precinct to really know what the deal is with Clegane.

“What do you mean?” Snow asks.

“Clegane’s a bit…” he doesn’t know how to describe it. 

“I know,” Snow says, giving him the sort of smile that implies to Gendry that he doesn’t know at all.  “I met him years back.  He’s a bit…”

 _Murderous fuckhead_ , were the exact words Arya had used at last year’s Christmas party, when she’d gotten drunk and shoved Clegane into a table and Gendry, Dondarrion, and Myr had had to hold the two of them back.  Clegane had found it—funny implied humorous—but he’d laughed at the whole situation.  

It never ceased to amaze Gendry that someone who had been acquitted of a homicide was even allowed to work at a police precinct, but that was the way of things these days, he supposed. 

Snow pushed open the door.

“Clegane,” Snow said by way of greeting, then froze.  “Are you _drinking?_ ”

“What of it?”  Clegane had his feet up on his desk, was leaned back in his chair and definitely had a beer in his hands.  And—from the looks of it, another empty beer can in the recycling bin by his desk. 

Snow looks taken aback by Clegane’s response.  _I did try to warn him._ “That’s a fireable offense.” 

“Who’s going to fucking fire me?” Clegane asks, taking a swig of his beer.  “My brother tried to fire me once,” he points at the burn scars on his face.  “But here I am.  You going to start preaching like Myr about how drinking at eleven in the morning is a sign of addiction?  I didn’t sign up for his bloody AA crap, but he never shuts up about it.”  Clegane takes another swig of beer.  “Wish I could fire _him_.”

“We wanted to look through office tapes from yesterday.” Gendry cuts in, and Clegane looks at him, his lips pulling back in a smile that looks more like a growling dog.

“What for?  You fuck up and don’t want to be caught?”  That hit a little too close to home.

“No,” Gendry says at the same time that Snow says, “We didn’t fuck up, but something happened and we need to get to the bottom of it?”

“You got the Captain’s approval?” Clegane demands. 

“For someone who’s drinking at eleven in the morning, you care a lot about whether Seaworth’s in the know,” Gendry says.  That makes Clegane laugh a very similar humorless laugh as when Arya had shoved him. 

He wonders if Clegane knows that’s where his thoughts had gone.  They had to have done, because the sneer is back on his face.  “How’s your little bitch?” 

Gendry stiffens and his gaze hardens.  He crosses his arms over his chest angrily.  If it were anyone but Clegane, this would be full-on intimidation mode. But it’s Clegane, so he just laughs again.  If they weren’t in the precinct, Gendry’s fairly certain that he’d have decked him, but he’s at work and he doesn’t want to get fired twice over today.  He doesn’t know how he’d explain that one to Arya at dinner—can’t quite tell if she’d be proud or think he was stupid.  

Clegane kicks his feet off the desk.  “I’m going for a piss.  I want you two out of here while I do that.  Don’t want you fucking with my machines.”

“Are you going to let us look through the tapes?” Snow asks as Clegane lumbers towards them.

“Fuck no.  Come back with captain’s approval then we can talk.”

He pushes past them and closes the door behind them.  Then, for good measure, locks it.

* * *

Arya: _Well?_

Gendry: _Talking to Clegane._

Arya: _Is he helping?_

Gendry:  _We’ll make it work._

* * *

 

They were making it work.  Insofar as they were able, that is.  There was, of course, a better idea for how to handle this situation, but Gendry—eager to prove his mettle—and Jon—determined to show Cersei Lannister that he wasn’t a blow-hard and Davos Seaworth that he wasn’t the know-nothing fool that Aegon Targaryen had pretended to be—aren’t really going that route.  Sometimes determined young men with something to prove aren’t the best at making tactical plans.  In fact, one could argue, that is frequently the case.

Clegane takes his lunch break every day at 12:30 PM.  He disappears from his desk for an hour—no one knows where he goes—and leaves said desk unattended.  Smith had pointed this out to Jon surreptitiously as they’d made their way back to the kitchen for coffee and pondering.  It made Jon smile.

“Good call,” he says, nodding to Smith as he stirs sugar into his coffee.  “Think he’ll lock it?”

“I don’t know,” Smith admits.  “He doesn’t usually, I don’t think.  But he might today because he knows we’re after something.”

“Or he might assume that we follow the rules too much to try something like that,” Jon points out.  It’s as if, he can’t help but think fondly, Arya’s entered his brain.  “Worse comes to worse, I can pick the lock.”

“You can?” Smith asks.

“So long as no one sees,” Jon says.  “My sister taught me when I was younger.  She used to break into our uncle’s room to mess up his underwear.”

Jon, it should be noted, had no idea that Gendry already knows this.  It’s something that Arya had told him about gleefully one day—about how her aunt’s second husband, a total sleazebag, wore silk boxers and she’d constantly destroyed them because she hated the man for no other reason than that he said rude things to her father.  Now seems as a good time as any to point out that Jon does not know that Gendry has been with Arya now for two years, that he’s been texting her throughout most of the morning, that he’d had sex with her that very day before coming to work. 

“Cute,” Smith says.  “Sounds like quite an enterprising young woman.”

Jon smiles fondly.  Arya and her antics can always put a smile on his face.  He wonders what Arya would do if she knew that the vic had gone missing.  He’s tempted to text her, but she’s been very busy lately with law review and he doesn’t want to burden her.  Especially not when he can tell the story later tonight when he’s out to dinner with her and this boyfriend of hers.  And Dany.  His stomach lurches.  He’s tempted to text her again.  But he also doesn’t want to come off as needy. 

He hates being at this stage of whatever he and Dany are.  Where you don’t know what’s too much and what’s just right because you want to literally never stop texting her and you can’t stop noticing the increasing warmth in her eyes when she looks at you.

Anyway.

“Yeah,” Jon says.  Focusing on Arya is safer than focusing on Dany.  “She’s the best person.  Missed her like mad when I was under cover.

“You couldn’t communicate with her at all?”  (Gendry already knows the answer to this.  Learning just how much Jon’s absence hurt Arya had been a ‘we’ve reached the next level of our emotional entanglement’ moment for them.)  

Jon shakes his head.  “Nope.  She finished college and started law school and I just…wasn’t there.  And now she’s been dating this guy for two years and I’m gonna meet him tonight.”

“Ahh—about—” Smith begins to say something but he cuts himself off because Sam’s come into the kitchen, looking nervous.

“Myr just told me,” Sam says, looking between the two of them.  “What are you going to do?”

“Don’t tell Seaworth,” Jon says at once.  That stops Sam short.  He looks between Jon and Smith.

“You’re going to go break the rules again, aren’t you?” 

Jon loves Sam like a brother, but this is one of the reasons he’s glad not to be partnered with him anymore.  Sam’s a rule follower and a book smarts sort of guy, which is great for so many cases, but when the going gets tough, the tough got to get going, and that’s the attitude that Smith brings to the table.

“No,” Jon says at once.  This, of course, is a lie.  “We’re just figuring out how to tell him is all.  We’re trying to figure it out.  It’s not exactly the sort of thing that you can just stroll into his office and tell him.”

“Why not?” Sam asks, then he pauses.  “It doesn’t matter.  I won’t tell.  It’s your problem, but if I can help…” his voice trails away and Jon knows that Sam knows that he’s lying.  “Let me know.” 

He loves Sam like a brother, and knows what it cost him to throw himself in with Jon like that, even though they’re no longer partners. 

“Just…keep an eye on him for me, will you?” Jon asks.  “If it looks like he knows, text me, ok?”

Sam nods.  “I can do that,” he responds.

“And if anyone asks you about it, you know nothing.”

“I know nothing, Jon Snow,” Sam says in a tone that implies a salute, even if he’s not physically saluting.  He glances at Smith and gives him a quick nod, then hurries out of the kitchen again.

“So,” Jon says to Gendry.  “Clegane’s office in an hour?”  He feels reckless.  It’s almost like the old days, before he’d been under cover, before he’d come back to life. 

“Sounds good.”

And they part ways for a short window of time—to do paperwork.

* * *

Dany: _How does a body just go missing?_

Jon: _That’s what we’re trying to figure out?_

Dany: _Is the mortician drunk or something?_

Jon _: He’s a recovering alcoholic, so I’m striking that one off the list._

Dany:  _Sorry that was in poor taste._

Jon:  _You didn’t know._

Jon: _We’re going to check the security footage in a few minutes._

Dany: _Hopefully that’ll produce something._

Jon: _Yeah._

Jon:  _Who even steals a dead body?  Honestly._

* * *

 

Clegane, as it turns out, had locked his door in his suspicion that the two of them might sneak in.  Snow, as it turns out, is not as good at picking locks as Arya is.

This doesn’t surprise Gendry at all.  Arya, after all, is very good at picking locks.  He’s seen her break into each of their apartments more than once in instances where they got locked out.

“Arya makes it look so easy,” Snow says.

Gendry doesn’t know how to respond to that.  How do you respond to it?  “I know.  I’ve seen her do it naked.”  (She hadn’t been naked, she’d been in a towel.  And drunk.  He’d never been more turned on.)  He goes with, “Clearly you haven’t practiced enough.”

“Clearly not,” Jon says.  “I was twiddling my thumbs while I was dead, wasn’t I?”

“While you were…”

Snow shrugs.  “I took on the identity of a dead man.  Should have used that time to practice my skills at—” the lock clicks “—breaking and entering.” 

“When’d she teach you?” Gendry decides instead.  Maybe if they keep up this line of conversation, he can somehow bring it up.  He should have just told Snow immediately upon meeting him.  What’s so hard about saying “I’m in love with your sister?”  But no.  No, he’d gone with “It’s an honor,” and hinted that their dads had known each other like a coward.  And he had to be on first name terms with Jon by dinner or else Arya would be upset.  She’d pretend she wouldn’t be.  But she would be.

“A few weeks ago,” Snow said as they slipped in.  “I got locked out of my apartment and just like that she has us in,” he shakes his head.  “I forget sometimes that she’s not a little girl anymore.  She’s sort of short, so I can pretend sometimes…”

Gendry, on the other hand, rarely thinks of Arya as a little girl.  Indeed, given the nature of their sex that morning, he feels distinctly uncomfortable thinking about her as being younger than she was when they met the summer before she started law school, already a fully fledged adult with opinions and lock picking skills whose unbridled passion for everyone and everything she touched he didn’t know how he deserved.

Anyway. 

“Anyway, it’s hard to think of her dating some guy I haven’t met yet.”  Gendry shifts uncomfortably behind Jon, but Jon can’t see him do that.  “You know?  Like not in a primal patriarchal ‘don’t touch my virgin sister’ sort of way.  In a…I don’t know.  I missed this part of your life sort of way.”  He glances at Gendry.  “You got any siblings?” 

“Not that I’m close to,” he says.  He does his best not to talk about Bella at work, because it feels as though he’s going to accidentally bust her.  And Mya is wary of men, generally—especially Gendry because he looks so much like their dad—so it’s not untrue to say they’re not close.  “Half-siblings, mostly.  Must be nice to have siblings you’re close to.”

Snow smiles fondly.  “Arya and I are a team.  Always were.  Always working in sync together.  Anyway,” Snow turns to the monitor.  “Any idea how this thing works?”

Gendry pauses.

“I’m sure we can figure it out.”

This, of course, is an overestimation.

* * *

Jon: _Do you by any chance know how to work a security monitor?_

Arya: _Oh, this is going to be a good story later, isn’t it?_

Jon: _I’ll tell you over dinner._

Arya: _What happened to Clegane?_

Jon: _How do you know about Clegane?_

* * *

When Arya doesn’t reply, Jon figures Sam must have told her.  They’d gotten coffee every now and then while he’d been dead, and he’s sure that Sam will have told her about the precinct.  In any case, he turns back to Smith, who is now bending over Clegane’s keyboard. 

In a stroke of luck for the two of them, though Clegane had locked the door of his office, he had not locked his computer before leaving (another fireable offense), and the machine hadn’t gone to sleep just yet.  So it was easy to scroll through his files and try and work out what might have happened in the eight hours since Myr was working on the body and when the body disappeared.  (Not taking into account, of course, that their searching through Clegane’s files without his permission or a warrant was also, likely, a fireable offense.)

“Glad all this is digital,” Jon comments, leaning over Smith’s shoulder.  Smith is taller than him, and so it’s nice to feel like he’s not the short one if only for a moment.  “It wasn’t before I died.”

Not that either of them particularly know how to use the program installed.  They tried dragging files to Clegane’s VLC player first, and were amused to find he’d been watching a documentary on rescue dogs there that looked like a real tear-jerker, but the files seemed to be encrypted in a way that VLC couldn’t crack. 

“Wait,” Smith says and he clicks a button.  Clegane’s most frequently used applications pop up, and, apart from his internet and VLC, they click into an application with a bland name and a bland logo, which promptly asks them to load footage.

They do immediately, and from there it’s easy.  Except, of course, that they’d clicked the wrong video file, and were now watching something from the wrong side of the office. 

Jon looks at his watch and groans.  “We’re running out of time,” he groans.

They are.  It’s already quarter past one and they’ve made no progress. 

Smith stands suddenly.  “I’ve got an idea,” he says.  “Keep looking through this.” 

And he strolls out of the door and disappears.

* * *

Arya: _Tell the truth: does Jon know about us yet._

Gendry: _I’m working on it._

Arya: _Gendry, he’s been back for two months and you’re his partner.  What the shit?_

Gendry: _It’s been tricky.  It’ll happen before dinner, I promise._

Arya:  _I mean, he’s finding out one way or another tonight, but he needs to actually like you, Gendry._

Gendry: _Working on that too._

* * *

Gendry is quite confident that Arya will forgive him what he’s about to do.  It’s in service of the greater assignment—that Jon like Gendry—after all. 

Arya has never liked macho displays of primal protectiveness of your girlfriend.  “ _I’m not some chick you hit over the head with a club and dragged back to your cave.  I can take care of myself, thanks_.”  He does, of course, stand up with her, but he’s learned, over the years, that Arya doesn’t care about whether he defends her honor so much as whether he wants to defend her honor.  She’ll defend her own honor when the time comes, thank you very much.

And especially with someone like Sandor Clegane, who’d gotten off on the hit and run that had killed a best friend Gendry had never known….it was hard to know if she’d hate Gendry for what he was about to do or if they’d get a repeat of that morning’s very good sex after dinner that night.  (Gendry is forgetting in this moment of talking himself up to what he’s about to do that whether or not he and Arya have sex that night has more to do with how well their dinner goes and less to do with this particular moment of the early afternoon.)

Gendry steps outside the precinct and sees Clegane rounding the corner nose buried in his phone.  He squares his shoulder, thinks of Arya, thinks of _Snow_ , and marches towards him. 

“Don’t you ever call her my bitch again,” he growls angrily.

Clegane looks up, startled.  But his face changes fast.  “Don’t like that?  I suppose it should have been the other way around.  You’re _her_ bitch, aren’t you?”  Clegane tries to step around Gendry, but Gendry refuses to let him.

“I know what you are,” Gendry says quietly, and Clegane freezes. 

“What’s that, then?  What stupid little ideas has she put in your head?”

“You killed him,” Gendry decides.  He remembers Arya’s drunken shrieks, and the tears afterwards when they’d been in a cab back to her apartment.

“Funny.  I seem to recall getting off that charge, didn’t I?”

“Only for lack of witnesses,” Gendry says. 

“Shit police work on your side, then.  Or shit work on the DA’s part.  Whichever you’d prefer.”

“And because you’re in the Lannisters' pocket,” Gendry adds, remembering something another thing that Arya had said. 

That, more than anything that Gendry had said about Arya, makes Clegane glare furiously at him.

“I’m in no one’s pocket,” he says angrily.  “Fuck the Lannisters.”

“Cersei Lannister was your prosecutor, wasn’t she?  Everyone knows she’s corrupt, and only gets people off when she wants to.”

“Fuck you,” Clegane shouts at him.  “You don’t know anything about it.  I’m not their dog.” 

“And yet she didn’t even try to get the book thrown at you.  She’s fierce when she wants to be but you ran over the person who insulted her precious son and—”

Clegane looks as though he’s about to deck him, but instead his head snaps around and he begins to march towards the precinct.  “and so you got off!” Gendry shouts after him.  “You know it’s true.  You know that’s exactly what happened.”

“Fuck off, Smith, I’m warning you.  Fuck.  Off,” Clegane shouts at him as they badge in.  Gendry’s glad he’s loud.  That’ll give Snow time to clear out.  And that’s what he’d been after.

“You fuck off to,” Gendry shouts back.

“You deserve each other—you too.  You and that little bitch, always after my neck.  Neither of you bloody get it.”

“I told you—don’t call her a bitch!” 

They round the corner.  The door to Clegane’s office is closed, and Clegane fumbles with his key, unlocks the door, and Gendry’s relieved to see that Jon isn’t in there.  The screen on the computer is blank.  Then, Clegane slams the door in his face.

* * *

Dany: _Do you still have a job?_

Jon: _Yeah.  Why wouldn’t I?_

Dany:  _You’ve gone quiet for a while._

Jon: _Figuring it out.  Don’t worry :-)_

Dany: _I always worry about you._

Jon:  _Thanks._

Dany: _I meant in the sweet way, not in the derisive way._

Jon: _I meant in the genuine way, not the snarky way._

Jon: _We’re disgusting._

Dany: _We totally are xx_

* * *

“What’d you find?”  Smith asks him breathlessly when he comes to the bullpen. 

Jon shakes his head, sadly.  “Dondarrion found me,” he said.  “Had some questions about a different case, so I couldn’t finish.”

Smith looks crestfallen.  “Thanks for running decoy, though.  That was a good way to give me a few extra minutes, and know when he’d be back.”  Jon sighs and leans back in his chair.  “Sorry Clegane’s being an asshole about your girlfriend.”

Smith’s lips twist in a grimace.  “They hate each other,” he says. 

“So I gathered,” Jon nods.  “What’s her—”

“I have a moment—what did you need, Jon?” Pyp asks, coming over, and Jon stops asking what Smith’s girlfriend’s name is.  Does he imagine it, or does Smith actually almost groan?

“We wanted to look at visitor records,” Jon says.  “For the past day or so.”

“Sure thing,” Pyp says, gesturing for them to follow.  Jon and Smith follow him to the front desk where he settles down at his computer. 

They scroll past names and names and names—witnesses for testimony, most likely.  And then, last night at about six pm…

“Who’s Sharna Baker?” Jon asks.

“Mother Merciless Funeral Home,” Gendry says, following the line across to her affiliation.  “Mother Merciless?  Shouldn’t it be Mother Merciful?”

Jon and Gendry both look at each other and they know. They just know.

“Oh, I’m going to kill him,” they say at the same time, and they hurry from the office.  “Thanks Pyp!” Jon calls over his shoulder.

They’re halfway down the hallway towards the stairs to the morgue when— 

“Snow.  Smith.  A word,” barks Seaworth at the same time that Jon feels his phone buzz in his pocket.  It buzzes a specific pattern—the pattern he’d assigned to know when Sam texted. 

“Shit.”

* * *

Shit indeed.  Because when they come into Seaworth’s rather spacious office, Jon and Gendry find Clegane sitting there.

“What were you doing going through Clegane’s files?” Seaworth asks, not beating around the bush.

“His files?” Jon stalls. 

“I’m head of security.  You think I can’t check tapes to see if either of you were in my office?” Clegane demands.  “You picked my fucking lock.”

Jon thinks, fast.  Seaworth’s usually a very benevolent captain, but he looks serious now.  But before he can open his mouth, Seaworth says, “Thanks, Clegane.  I’ll get to the bottom of this.”

Clegane gets up and Jon feels Gendry breathe a little more easily.  Hell, he’s breathing a little more easily.  It’ll be easier to sort the whole thing out without Clegane breathing down their necks—especially now that they know what happened to the vic.

“The whole story.  From the beginning,” Seaworth says.

“We were following up on the John Doe in the basement.  The one who we found the perp for, but not the identity,” Jon begins.  “And it went missing from Myr’s morgue.  Just missing.”

“So you wanted to check where it might have gone,” Seaworth says.

“Yes,” Gendry says.

“And why didn’t you tell me?”

Neither of them say a word, and Seaworth rolls his eyes.  He presses some buttons on his desk phone and says into it, “Tormund, can you get Myr up for me?”

“This,” Davos tells them both, “was a waste of everyone’s time and resources.  I hope you both know that.  At worst I should have you both suspended for a day or two to teach you a lesson.”

Neither of them say a word.  Jon wonders if Gendry also feels as though he’s ten again, and being admonished by his father.  Then he remembers that Gendry didn’t have a father growing up. 

“It was my fault,” Jon says.  “I know I should have gone directly to you, captain.  I have a track record of just going with my gut.  Sam can tell you—he worked with me at my last precinct.  It can cause trouble.”

“No, I went along with it,” Gendry says firmly, and Jon feels a rush of warmth towards his partner.  “I knew the ropes, I’ve been in this precinct for a while, I should have known to come straight to you, regardless of the situation.”

Seaworth looks at both of them, then shakes his head and rolls his eyes.  “I suppose this is _why_ we partner people.  So they have one another’s backs.” 

Jon glances at Gendry.  Yeah.  Yeah—he has Gendry’s back, and Gendry’s had his.  This was the moment where their partnership became a partnership and not just assigned partners after his return and Gendry’s promotion.  Maybe if he didn’t like Arya’s boyfriend, he could set her up with Gendry.  Or was that too soon?  Probably, right?

There’s a knock on the door, and Myr comes in.  “What happened to the John Doe?” Seaworth asks, and Myr flushes.

“His name was Aeron Greyjoy.  He was identified and brought to a funeral home last night.”

“So you were just having a little bit of fun with us, weren’t you?”  Gendry snaps angrily.  “Was Clegane in on it too?”

“No, but Beric definitely was,” Myr grins.  “This is payback for—” but Seaworth cuts him off.

“That’s enough.  Myr, apologize to these two for wasting their morning.  Then I want you two to go and apologize to Clegane.  _Yes,_ apologize,” he adds firmly when they both groan.  “Then it’s paperwork for the rest of the day.  I’m sure you’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”

* * *

Jon: _It’s all sorted out._

Dany: _Oh good.  Tell me at dinner? I’ll want to hear the story, and I’m sure Arya will too._

Jon: _Absolutely.  I’ll tell the whole stupid tale.  Got lots of work to catch up on now._

Dany: _xx_.

* * *

 

“Well that was ridiculous,” Jon mutters angrily as he sits down opposite Gendry at their desks.  “But at least it’s resolved before dinner with Arya and her boyfriend.  How do I make myself not look like a moron in this story?” 

Gendry steels himself.  He steels himself hard.  “You won’t have to.  I’m Arya’s boyfriend.  We can figure out what to tell her and Dany together.”

Jon stares at him. 

“Look, I get that Myr was pulling my chain but—”

Gendry pulls out his phone and opens up the pictures app and finds the album he’s labeled Arya (which, he congratulates himself in that moment, is void of any of the not safe for work pictures he’s quite sure Jon won’t want to see and may hate him for).  There’s a picture of them in the park, a selfie with her dog, her sticking her tongue out at him while they were in line for baseball tickets…the whole album if pictures from the last two years.  When he closes the album, his lock screen is a picture of him kissing Arya’s forehead.

“Was trying to figure out how to tell you,” Gendry mumbles because Jon’s sitting there looking totally shell shocked.  “It wasn’t easy to figure out the right way, especially since I dicked it up.  Should have told you immediately, but the more time passed…”

Jon’s nodding, but he doesn’t look fully present.  He’s clearly thinking, hard.

Gendry leans back in his seat, and decides it’s best to give Jon space and hopes that he didn’t completely fuck up.

* * *

 

Gendry: _Jon knows.  Just told him._

Arya: _And?_

Gendry: _TBD._

Arya: _I guess that makes sense.  See you at dinner._

* * *

Arya and Dany are chatting when Jon and Gendry come out of the office.  Dany’s just come from work and looks so lovely in her suit, and she and Arya are talking intensely about judicial powers and human rights.  Jon’s pleased to see them both nodding fervently as they talk.  He’s worried—not so much about how well they’ll like each other—but how much they’d _agree_ since he knows them both well enough to know their approaches aren’t always the same when it comes to law. 

“So?”  Dany asks after introductions occur.  “What happened?” 

Jon and Gendry look at one another.  They haven’t talked much this afternoon, but as they lock eyes they have this perfect moment of understanding, and Jon reads a firm _I’ve got your back_ in Gendry’s blue gaze.

“Oh man,” Jon says, “It’s ridiculous.  We think someone from the perp’s gang broke in and actually stole the body.  We’re trying to track the guy down now.”

This, of course, as you all so clearly know, is a lie.


End file.
